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Smiling Woman

Zygmunt Kurczynski

Basic information
ID
С-I-408
Author
Zygmunt Kurczynski
Name
Smiling Woman
Date of creation
1930
Country
Poland
Culture
Contemporary times
Technique
moulding
Material
plaster
Dimensions (height x width x depth, cm)
47 x 28 x 18
Additionally
Type
sculpture 3D
Genre
portraiture
Plot
Portrait bust
Provenance
National Gallery of Lviv (until 1940)
Information about author
Author
Zygmunt Kurczynski
Artist's lifetime
1886–1953/54 (?)
Country
Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland, the Ukrainian SSR,
Biography
Zygmunt Kurczynski (2 April 1886, Lviv – 11 March 1953 (1954 /?/), Wroclaw) was a Polish sculptor and graphic artist. He was born in Lviv in the family of a tailor, Stanislaw Kurczynski, who had a workshop at 8 Krakivska Street. During his childhood and youth, he lived in poverty. From 1901 to 1905, he studied at the Lviv Art and Industrial School under T. Wisniowski and J. Beltowski. From 1905 to 1908, he continued his studies at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts under K. Laszczka, who considered him one of the best students and saw an outstanding professional future for him. He was awarded a silver medal at the Academy for the "Drunken Faun" sculpture. After graduating, he went to Munich. In 1908, he spent several months in Paris, where he studied with P. Troubetzkoy and worked as a stonemason in the studio of A. Rodin. He developed his artistic style based on a synthesis of inspiration from Impressionism, Secession, Symbolism, and Greek Archaism. Returning to Lviv in 1908, he set up a studio in the Palace of Arts in Stryiskyi Park and received numerous commissions and recognition. Over the next decade, he created over 200 sculptures of various genres and forms in tinted plaster, marble, tin and bronze. Z. Kurczynski's creative development reached its peak in 1915–1918. The development of the sculptor's artistic style after 1918 is marked by a transition from Secessionist pictorial and graphic decorativeness and symbolic imagery to the stylisation of the archaic in the spirit of E.A. Bourdelle, neoclassical and neo-Baroque forms. Monumental and decorative sculptures, which adorned numerous buildings built in Lviv in 1908–1914, formed an essential part of the artist's work. Their artistic solutions were characterised by skilfully adapting to the architectural structures, strengthening the frontality, neutralising volumes, and emphasising contours. In 1919–1939, Z. Kurczynski taught drawing and sculpture at the Art and Industrial School and the St. Jadwiga Gymnasium. In the 1920s, he worked as a painter and graphic artist. He was elected to the town council. In 1924, he became vice-president of the Union of Artists of Eastern Malopolska. As an art critic, he collaborated with the Polish magazines "New Age", "Morning and Evening Newspaper", and "Lviv Courier". From 1944 to 1945, he was a member of the Lviv branch of the Union of Artists of Ukraine. In 1946, he moved to Wroclaw, where he taught at the Polytechnic from 1947 to 1948.
Object description
"Smiling Woman" (1930) is a late easel sculpture by Z. Kurczynski, marked by the master's return to neoclassical forms with echoes of Secession decorativism. The influence of the cool neoclassical style can be seen in the idealisation, impersonality and extreme generalisation of the picture, in the soft modelling of the forms, and in the reproduction not of a situational state of happiness but of a smile of joy as an idea. The static nature of the picture, the absence of the powerful, almost Michelangelo-like internal dynamism of the artist's earlier works, as if inspired by the energies of the cosmic spheres, is indicative. The connection with the Secessionist style and the figurative and sculptural system created by Z. Kurczynski in monumental and decorative sculpture is indicated by the expressiveness, laconism, and stylised profile of the silhouette and the decorative wisps of hair. "Smiling Woman" is one of nine easel paintings by the sculptor preserved in Lviv, eight of which are in the museum collections and one in a private collection.
Inscriptions
Signed and dated on the base: "ZYGMUNT KURCZYŃSKI 1930".
Legal regulation
Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

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